#* olivier

Firstly, this question has different answers depending on how you look at it. Isla is quite gifted, in that, her involvement with the Rutherfords - while important, hasn't been super well known at all. Following her three-year "sabbatical" while in prison, it's even less so. Because of this, Isla is able to draw a very distinct line between her persona with the Rutherfords, and outside of it. Which is a long-winded way of me saying - she has chemistry with a lot of people. Put her in a room with anyone, and she can charm her way in.

Interest? If we're talking the obvious, Olivier. Why? Because he's nothing like Julian. He makes her feel important without even trying and without any real reason to. It's easy and comforting to be around him. He makes her feel that spark again - and she was so sure Julian snuffed that right out of her.

honorary mentions: benjamin, ayaz (not anymore pls), thomas (until she figured out he was playing for the other team)

Much easier had she found anything else to steer her elsewhere – isla might have known it nigh impossible, yet she'd swear she tried. nevertheless the gravitational pull was inevitable, "didn't think you'd be here this year – hard to follow up a date with the bosses wife.." As if she hadn't remembered the serpents coil that had constricted in her chest a year before hand.

She had no right to be back here, no tangible reason other than the careless control her heart held over her in that moment. The edges of her vision still a little blurry in the aftermath of her own fight, Isla hadn't exactly wanted to be out in the thick of it - the things that Jordana had said to her felt like an open wound to the chest. It all did. A never ending - never healing wound and it'd festered for as long as she remembered, because she never took the time to find a way to heal. Maybe that was why she was here. The soft knock felt foreign, so used to barging in, demanding answers and attention from anyone that might offer it to her. Anything to mask everything that lay beneath the surface - but not this, not him. The door creaked open, and the few people within it spilled from the room. She hadn't even demanded they leave yet - each of them taking stock of the blood stained hair, cuts and marks that plastered her features. She doesn't have it in her to bite out a sharp retort. Her focus isn't on them. Momentarily, she questions whether they left upon his own request. A moment to himself before his match with Varden. Still, she lingers. The door almost closing before she found the nerve to cross the threshold, "Hey.." genius... "Sorry, did you want to be alone?"

Seven deleted text messasges.

That was how many it took before Isla could stomach sending the most barebones request to meet her outside. Hours had passed, with the pair of them caught within the same four walls of a bar without a word spoken between them and she'd hated every second - regardless off how angry she still felt.

The last time they'd even spoken, a rushed few seconds after disaster struck at the awards after party, and Isla had been left slinking from a closet behind him looking as if they'd been doing exactly what they'd been doing. She wasn't stupid and the turmoil that had errupted had drawn lines in a deeper shade of red than they'd been in what felt like a long time - but that didn't make it feel any easier. It felt hollow - hollow and sharp. Like moth to a flame, she wanted the burn but she detested the marks it left behind. Still, not a single message she'd typed out and deleted had come close to spilling forth the thoughts in her head when it came to Olivier, and when she'd settled on a simple, "Outside. Five minutes." she hadn't actually expected him to comply.

Though the friendship between the two had never really been mended, if there was one thing they could come together on, it was Lisette and her safety. Understandably, Theo knew that the lives they lived always ran the risk of coming to a cataclysmic halt; it was still always a shock when something tore through the ranks of the french the way it constantly seemed to. "Any news on your end?" He asked, his voice clipped as he settled hands upon the desk that overlooked the city - the greater view from the office of his law firm still looked somehow duller than usual. All grey concrete and skies. "I've had nothing from the blues," the men and women holding badges of legal authority while simultaneously sitting happily upon his payroll. "No Russian movement despite this bullshit.

Smash, with a car.

...